Police Net Covering East End

All-out Search For Attacker Now Includes Fbi Profile

October 28, 1994|By BLAIR ANTHONY ROBERTSON Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — With leads drying up in a high-profile case involving sexual assaults on East End girls, Newport News police upped the ante Thursday, releasing an FBI profile of the suspect and urging residents to call a new 24-hour hotline.

Police believe that as many as 15 attacks since 1990 may be linked to one man.

After the latest assault, an early-morning attack on a 14-year-old girl Sept. 21, police flooded the area, searching for leads in an investigation that had been marked by scores of dead ends.

Within hours of the latest attack, which was thwarted when a pair of barking dogs on 26th Street scared off the suspect, police began passing out flyers about the incident and beefing up patrols in the East End.

Calls poured in. People were questioned. Nothing panned out.

"That's why we're appealing to the community members to look real hard at people they know,''said Lt. Lynn Pearson, who is heading the police investigation, ``and to give us a call - even if they don't have anything to go on other than the person sounds like they might fit, or his physical description or the composite resembles them."

In the days after the Sept. 21 attack, a group of black residents led by the Rev. Marcellus Harris confronted the City Council, complaining that the city had not given the East End attacks enough attention. All of the victims have been black girls in the predominantly black East End.

Since then, Mayor Barry DuVal and Police Chief William F. Corvello went along on a pre-dawn patrol of the area, and Harris announced a "black ribbon campaign" as a way to draw attention to the incidents.

Corvello said his department is moving ahead in four phases in an effort to crack the case. The first two phases involved flooding the target area, first with uniformed patrols, then with undercover officers.

The third phase involves generating information, in part by making public for the first time a psychological profile of the suspect and offering rewards for information. The FBI created the profile from information supplied by Newport News police.

Newport News Shipbuilding has put up $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and Crime Line will pay another $1,000.

The new hotline, which the sexual assault task force will monitor around the clock until 3 p.m. Sunday, is 247-8661. After that, the hotline will operate on a more limited schedule.

Phase four of the probe means hitting the streets, Corvello said.

"We're going to knock on every damn door down there," Corvello said. "We're going to knock on every door in the target areas and talk to people."

Asked to account for the gap between the 1990-91 attacks and the assaults this May and September, Pearson said the suspect may have been staying with family elsewhere or could have been in a mental institution.

Harris, who attended the 9 a.m. news conference along with several city officials, expressed enthusiasm for the police effort and encouraged East End residents to "flood" the hotline. He announced a prayer rally Tuesday at New Hope Baptist Church in support of the police investigation.

"Ultimately, our goals are the same - to have this culprit or culprits caught,'' Harris said. ``What I've asked for - begged for - continuously is a sense of collaboration in the police department and our community. It has begun to emerge now better than I have seen for a while."

ATTACKER PROFILE

* The suspect is described as a black male, 28 to 30 years old, 5 feet 9 inches to 5 feet 11 inches tall, 155 to 170 pounds with a slim build and medium complexion.

* An FBI psychological profile describes the attacker as "a social misfit - withdrawn, uncertain of himself, timid, hesitant, one who would be considered a loner," according to Police Chief William Corvello.

* The profile also suggests: The suspect probably lives close to the crime scenes and has had significant ties to the community.